


sepia tint

by glim



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It, M/M, Memories, POV Bucky Barnes, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 16:14:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glim/pseuds/glim
Summary: He knows; he knows from the phantom ache in his chest that's almost a memory, almost a kind of lingering sweetness as the sun sets around them and turns the world the same burnished sepia of old-fashioned photographs.





	sepia tint

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 'time travel' square on my Trope Bingo Round 12 card.

As soon as the wind shifts, Bucky knows. The knowledge runs deep in his soul, rushing through him on the edge of the sudden breeze. Something flickers in his mind, not quite a memory, the ghost of a memory, perhaps, something faded and golden. 

For the first time in decades, he feels the phantom pain in his left wrist, the ache that climbs to his shoulder and lingers. 

He closes his eyes and lets the wind stir his hair and touch his skin; he tries to hold onto the pain and the memory, both of which are his and _not his_. 

Bucky knows. 

Bucky knows before he nudges Sam towards the bench, knows before he hears the slightly different timbre of the other man's voice, knows before he watches Sam walk away and before he walks over to the bench himself. 

Hands tucked into his pockets, he sits down next to the man who is both Steve and not Steve and waits. 

The sun sinks closer to the horizon and the world around them settles into a mellow quiet, slanted sunlight turning gold around them. 

Bucky raises his head and gives a nod. 

"Did you ever meet him?" 

Steve stares out into the sinking sunlight and then looks at Bucky, serious at first, then with a softness that touches his eyes in such a familiar way that it makes Bucky's chest ache with longing. He shakes his head, raises his hand as if qualify the gesture, then shakes his head again and looks away from Bucky. 

"No. They pulled me out of the ice in '48, told me we'd won the war, and that Sergeant Barnes had been--" His voice quavers and his hand curls up into a first.

That gesture is familiar, too, and Bucky feels another memory skitter over his senses, his own memory this time, long held and kept safe at the back of his heart: Steve, too thin, too frail, too protective of him. 

"And I didn't care," Steve continues, "I didn't care how Howard and Peggy knew, I didn't care where their SHIELD intel came from. I felt like I had ice in my blood and lungs, but that was nothing compared to knowing you were waiting for me." 

"You saved me," Bucky murmurs, though he knows it's not exactly right, that the phantom memories that brush up against his mind and heart are not his own. "You brought him home," he amends, "your Bucky." 

"Yes. We were--" And he stops, voice hovering on the edge of a word, then diminishing into a quiet sigh. 

_Happy_ , Bucky thinks, they were happy. In some world that ran parallel to his own, one of the threads of time had unraveled enough to allow him and Steve to have some kind of life together. He wants to ask--he wants to ask this other Steve everything. Where did they live? Was it just him and Steve, and what about Peggy? What about his parents and his sisters? Were there kids and backyard barbecues and did he finally get Steve to go out dancing with him? 

When Bucky glances aside, he sees that same, soft look in this Steve's eyes again and he knows he doesn't have to ask. He knows; he knows from the phantom ache in his chest that's almost a memory, almost a kind of lingering sweetness as the sun sets around them and turns the world the same burnished sepia of old-fashioned photographs. 

They both stand from the bench before the last light fades. They aren't his memories and this isn't his Steve, but the warmth he feels in his chest is his own. 

"Can you get home?" Bucky asks, then: "Do you have somebody to go home to?" 

Steve nods and gives Bucky a look like he shouldn't ask any more questions. 

"All right," Bucky says. "All right," he says again and he knows this too, with a knowledge that runs as deep inside him as his own memories, that somewhere between the quantum realm and the soul realm and the vast expanse of time and space, he'll bring his own Steve home again, too.


End file.
